Investors with no power to fire Mark Zuckerberg as Facebook Chairman have voted to fire Mark Zuckerberg as Facebook Chairman.
A futile exercise, one might conclude – but not Business Insider, who has a report about this.
It’s the thought that counts, it would appear. Facebook’s reputation among politicians and media in the US is so low, that it seems to be getting a little personal, with ongoing clamoring for Zuckerberg’s CEO head as an apparent means to appease them.
How would a new Chairman change Facebook’s main problem, that’s also its main strength as a money-making entity: the privacy undermining and eroding data collection business model, accountable to nobody? Hard to say – and it doesn’t seem to be a central concern here – as long as, presumably, “an independent” new chairman came in and just repaired relations with media and politicians.
But short of Zuckerberg deciding to step down, this new leader’s not coming in any time soon, as Zuckerberg controls about 60 percent of the overall voting power, and can, along with his allies on the board, ignore initiatives from outside shareholders, such as this one to oust him.
The Facebook shareholder revolt just got bloody, writes Business Insider – except that, obviously, it didn’t. But the report said as many as 86 percent of investors, who come from are outside the board or Facebook’s management structure, still let their voice be heard.
And their fury, said the website, stems from “the way Zuckerberg has handled a series of Facebook scandals, including election interference on the social network in 2016 and the giant Cambridge Analytica data breach last year.”
The report cites the results of an analysis of Facebook’s filing on investor voting, carried out by the Open Media and Information Companies Initiative (MIC) – an organization whose goal is “greater corporate accountability at media and technology companies” and whose tool are shareholders and investors.
This analysis reveals that outside shareholders supported two initiatives aimed at undermining Zuckerberg’s role: first, fire him as CEO, and then, give equal power to A and B class stockholders.
Under the company’s current rules, A class gets one, and B class ten votes a share.
Zuckerberg himself controls over 75 percent of B class shares, so the math at least is, as ever, on his side.
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